A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, July 2, 2017
Tower of human skulls in Mexico casts new light on Aztecs
Rodrigo
Bolanos, a biological anthropologist from the National Institute of
Anthropology and History (INAH), examines a skull at a site where more
than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments were found in
the cylindrical edifice near Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in
the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City, Mexico
June 30, 2017.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the
heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of
sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children
surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.
Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and
thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice near the site of the
Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan,
which later became Mexico City.
The tower is believed to form part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive
array of skulls that struck fear into the Spanish conquistadores when
they captured the city under Hernan Cortes, and mentioned the structure
in contemporary accounts.
Historians relate how the severed heads of captured warriors adorned
tzompantli, or skull racks, found in a number of Mesoamerican cultures
before the Spanish conquest.
But the archaeological dig in the bowels of old Mexico City that began in 2015 suggests that picture was not complete.
"We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be,
and the thing about the women and children is that you'd think they
wouldn't be going to war," said Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological
anthropologist investigating the find.
Henry Romero-Skulls
are seen at a site where more than 650 skulls caked in lime and
thousands of fragments were found in the cylindrical edifice near Templo
Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which
later became Mexico City, Mexico June 30, 2017.
Henry Romero
"Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new, a first in the Huey Tzompantli," he added.
Raul Barrera, one of the archaeologists working at the site alongside
the huge Metropolitan Cathedral built over the Templo Mayor, said the
skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public
display on the tzompantli.
Roughly six meters in diameter, the tower stood on the corner of the
chapel of Huitzilopochtli, Aztec god of the sun, war and human
sacrifice. Its base has yet to be unearthed.
There was no doubt that the tower was one of the skull edifices
mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes
in the 1521 conquest of Mexico, Barrera said.
In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of
thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli. Barrera
said 676 skulls had so far been found, and that the number would rise
as excavations went on.
Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Matthew Lewis